tax forms and headaches -yuck

I wanted to file my federal taxes by Jan 31 because I didn't do quarterly payments and I think I read somewhere that if you file by Jan 31 you don't have to worry about not getting the estimated payment for last quarter in by jan 15. Well I didn't get my ducks lined out until late last week and I was unsure of how to handle the oil royalties with deduction for depletion so I thought "oh I'll file on-line today and they'll have insta-pay so I wont have to worry about whether its a "postmarked by" deadline or $ in the IRS hands deadline.

I can now say that HR-block online and some outfit called internet-taxprep are WORTHLESS. If I had only needed to do the very basic form why would I bother paying for an on-line service? Neither one could handle oil royalties and rather than verify whether Timmy's turbo tax was just as useless I just filled out the forms myself. I did find something on the web which makes me think I probably did that correct and the cool thing was the oil depletion allowance is taken on schedule E and I could still use the standard deduction on the 1040 form.

So hopefully the infernal revenue service will be content with their hefty check received in a few days and postmarked Jan 31 and I wont have a penalty and they will also concur that I did the royalties correctly. Some days I really wish that old quote of "IF you want it done right you have to do it yourself" was not SO true all the time.

The HR-block website even said they had access to people to help if one got stuck. Yeah right, I would have paid extra to get a ph# or on-line chat with someone who could tell me how to fill out the schedule E etc but they didn't give me that option.

Then to top everything off I woke with head pain this morning. It was not the typical sinus pressure I have had, but was all on the left side so I don't know if its mainly a tension thing or deeper sinus pressure --more in my temple and behind my eye than in the cheek under my eye where I had been feeling sinus pain before. At least it eased off with just one hot compress round and alleve. In fact the actual headache wasn't even whine worthy but I am getting/remaining so spooked at the thought of not being able to get rid of whatever the source is and having the 2 hour headaches come back that I have to struggle to maintain some rationality.